Feminism and the Spaces of Transformation

Feminist political theory draws on particular spatial imaginations in elaborating a politics of transformation. This paper establishes this in relation to two familiar accounts of feminist transformation – those of Judith Butler and Luce Irigaray. Respectively I read their work as suggesting that transformation of gender relations takes the form of ubiquitous revolution, taking place everywhere, or a distant dream of an (im)possible future – elsewhere. The paper then turns to discuss the work of Julia Kristeva, often dismissed as not feminist and conservative. I read her work politically, within the frame of feminist theory. She offers a different, heterogeneous account of transformation, as both possible in the present and also limited by the existence and need for social and symbolic orders. In exploring the heterogeneous spatial imagination of her work, the paper suggests that the spatialities of abjection are diverse and productive. Abjection is not simply about devising territories and borders. Moreover, dominant spatialities cannot be described as simply masculine. Finally, drawing links with Lefebvre's account of representational spaces, I argue that Kristeva's work can be extended to inform our understanding of how spaces themselves can be transformed.     

The Imperial Subject: Geography and Travel in the Work of Mary Kingsley and Halford Mackinder

How do places shape and interact with subjectivity? By exploring how a change of location had implications for the way the effects of imperialism were registered, this paper shows how imperialism shaped subjectivity both at home and abroad. It takes the travels and mountain climbing of Mary Kingsley and Halford Mackinder as case studies for a consideration of gender as an effect and as a part of these processes.     

Gender and feminist studies in Albania – a brief state of the art

Abstract

The aim of this contribution is to identify how gender and feminist studies have positioned themselves within the higher education system in post-socialist Albania. In Albania, the post-socialist context was featured by a negative connotation of the left-wing perspective hindering the development of critical and feminist thinking in academia. There is a lack of feminist debate, and hostile prejudices against feminists stick well, particularly in the absence of a thorough debate about feminism. Gender and women’s studies are present mainly in the public university system in association with the Social Sciences Faculty. The only complete program on gender studies is situated within the Department of Social Work and Social Policy, as a Master program in Gender and Development. Gender or feminist studies are mostly taught as “optional” courses often just for the sake of having them present in the program. In this contribution, we aim at briefly presenting some of the main developments, gaps and challenges regarding gender and feminist studies in the Albanian higher education.     

基于性别制度的中国城市结构的历史演变

本文从中国性别制度和城市结构的历史变迁出发,通过对中国封建社会、半殖民地半封建社会、社会主义计划经济时期、社会主义市场经济时期四个历史阶段的女性生活和城市特征进行考察,分析了不同的性别结构与城市空间结构之间的关系,即:以及在不同的性别制度下女性社会生活在城市空间中的具体体现,即:集权制城市中女性空间的附属性、二元城市中女性空间的隔离性、单位制城市中性别空间的同一性、消费性城市中女性空间的主导性。随着消费文化的发展,女性将对中国城市化进程和空间结构演化产生越来越重要的影响。     

“Madam,you ought to be the man such times as these”: gendered confrontations and the Runaway Scrape

This article examines the power dynamics between men and women during the “Runaway Scrape.” During this chapter of the Texas Revolution, the situation looked bleak for the Texas army as they withdrew towards the Louisiana border to avoid the Mexican onslaught. Women, slaves, and the men not engaged in battle joined the retreat. This study focuses on the gendered contestations between those fleeing the attack. Women often found themselves challenging the authority, decision-making, character, and even manliness of their male counterparts; some casting aspersions on the masculinity of a wide array of historical actors, ranging from deserters to government and military officials.     

‘Homes’ and being ‘at home’ in New Zealand: women's place-making in internationalised higher education

Research on students' experiences in internationalised higher education largely assumes students' autonomy and privileges their public selves. New Zealand research is no exception. Little attention has been paid to students' lives beyond classroom contexts; how national policy and institutional practices shape students' everyday experiences and ‘home’ lives similarly and differently. In addition, gender is afforded scant attention or considered only as a secondary concern, and people whose partners or family members are international students are invisible. This article endeavours to address the relative inattention to gender in international education research and the invisibility of women whose partners are international students. It draws on data from interviews with 17 women involved in a broader doctoral research project during 2005 and 2006. The women were either migrant or international students or had partners enrolled as international students. The article uses ‘home’ as a lens for examining women's situated and transnational place-making and factors that promoted or precluded a sense of belonging in New Zealand. It draws connections between women's accounts of ‘home’ and feeling ‘at home’, and broader politics, policies and institutional practices in New Zealand higher education.     

The construction of gender-sensitive peacebuilding in Australia: ‘Advance Australia Fair’

Australia was the first United Nations member state to commit to the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund when it was established in 2006, and it has made annual contributions since then. Australia has also made significant contributions towards enhancing gender equality in peace and security governance, most recently during its 2013–14 term of office on the United Nations Security Council, recognising that gender matters in and to all aspects of peacebuilding activity. This article offers a discourse-theoretical policy analysis of a range of Australian Agency for International Development guidelines and strategies addressing gender and peacebuilding issues, and reads these against the international framework to explore the discursive construction of gender-sensitive peacebuilding in Australia. The authors argue that the representations of peacebuilding in the documents they analyse shape how Australia engages in peacebuilding-related activities and inform how Australia is positioned internationally as a peacebuilding actor.     

Drought policy in Australia: gender mainstreaming or gender blindness?

Australia is experiencing a major drought, one that has devastated the landscape and people for up to ten years. This major disaster has accelerated ongoing rural restructuring and created changes in the way farm family members order and live their lives. Yet despite evidence that drought is a gendered experience, that is, that generally women and men experience and respond to drought differently, and despite a rhetorical move to gender mainstreaming in Australian policy circles, drought policy remains significantly gender blind. In this article I use the example of emergency support to poverty stricken farm families to show how agricultural departments that attend to a notional norm of family farming as a unitary male pursuit can actively discriminate against women in their efforts to preserve the farm and support their families. The article exposes gender mainstreaming as an ‘empty signifier’ that is contextually grounded and that its success is highly dependent on making these issues transparent. For gender equity efforts to reach women at local levels, I argue that gender mainstreaming requires international collaboration by gender specialists to facilitate greater attention to gender assessments by national bodies. It also requires national coalitions of gender expert units, women's organisations and academics to work together to expose culturally specific gendered issues and discriminatory outcomes.     

Australian Federalism and Domestic Violence Policy-Making

The influence of state architecture on gender policy and politics is an emergent strand of feminist research. This paper contributes to this research by undertaking a detailed case study of one specific gender policy area – domestic violence policy – in old federation Australia. Drawing on the experiences of the past decade, it confirms earlier research findings that demonstrate that under certain conditions, federal structures can influence the development of gender policy in positive ways, such as providing opportunities for ‘venue shopping’ and policy innovation. The paper engages, too, with recent research on Australian federalism and challenges the consensus about the centralised nature of the Australian federal system by demonstrating that in the area of gender policy, states and territories are more than just the implementation arms of the Commonwealth government. Sub-national governments continue to play an important and autonomous role in policy relating to women and therefore remain central sites for advancing gender equality.     

Mirrors of the Nation: The Construction of National Character and Difference in the Historical Writings of E. G. Geijer

This article suggests that marriageable young upper-class women can be taken as indicators of the longue durée of the ancien régime mentality and the stepwise advancement of the bourgeois mentality. This is so because of factors that made such women particularly prone not to break with established conventions. Source materials in this analysis are taken from contemporary non-fiction texts in which 19th-century St Petersburg and Helsinki serve as the scenes and in which marriageable young women feature as the protagonists or objects of appraising gazes. It is suggested that the differences emerging around the mid-19th century between the two societies with regards to the habitus and education of upper-class girls and marriageable women can at least in part be explained by different institutional settings vis-à-vis land, labour and the status of the bourgeoisie.     

Gender equality: a core dimension in Rural Development Programmes in Austria?

The supranational gender equality regime of the European Union (EU), in place since the 1990s, affects gender-related social policy including the so-called ‘gender-neutral’ policy fields such as the common agricultural policy and rural development policy. Especially, the implementation of gender equality in all policy fields through the strategy of gender mainstreaming in EU Structural Funds and Rural Development Programmes has become a key challenge for political and administrative players and stakeholders. Analysis reveals that the existing institutional, political and social barriers for an effective implementation of gender equality in rural development policy are manifold. Instead of promoting rural women's agency and empowerment, Rural Development Programmes and processes in Austria are preserving and perpetuating traditional gender roles and patriarchal structures in rural society.     

Women,gender and feminism in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

This review article, written for the fiftieth anniversary of the Australian Journal of Political Science (formerly Politics), analyses articles focusing on women, gender and feminism that were published in the journal. The analysis demonstrates that the study of gender is relevant to a broad range of fields, and methodological approaches used, in political science. It also demonstrates that political science knowledge is itself historically and socially constructed, reflecting both traditional social power relations and the influence of the social movements that challenge them. Consequently, key articles have drawn attention to the ways in which the frameworks of mainstream forms of political science were gender-biased and have sometimes continued to be so, particularly in terms of narrow constructions of the ‘political’. Such narrow constructions may still be contributing to some ongoing gaps in the literature, despite the important contributions made by work published in the journal.